Nate Silver

Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, political analyst, author, sports gambler, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball and elections. He is the founder of ''FiveThirtyEight'' and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News until May 2023. Since departing ''FiveThirtyEight'', Silver has been publishing in his online newsletter ''Silver Bulletin'' and serves as an advisor to Polymarket.

Silver was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by ''Time'' in 2009 after his election forecasting model correctly predicted the outcomes in 49 of 50 states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. His subsequent models predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with high accuracy. Although he gave Donald Trump, the eventual winner, a 28.6% chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election, this was a higher estimate than any other scientific forecast.

Much of Silver's approach can be characterized by using statistical models to understand complex social systems such as professional sports, the popularity of political platforms and elections. Provided by Wikipedia